Image kindly supplied by Suave Aerial Photographers.

UAV SIG, University of Durham, July 2011

This successful and well attended two-day workshop was a joint initiative of the NERC Earth Observation Technology Cluster Programme and the RSPSoc UAV Special Interest Group (SIG), and took place at Durham University, UK on Thursday 7th and Friday 8th July 2011. Forty participants attended with some travelling from as far afield as the USA. Universities, research organisations and industry were all represented.

More photos are available here.

Thursday 7th July 2011

After a welcome by Prof Danny Donoghue, Dr Paul Aplin gave an introduction to the NERC Earth Observation Technology Cluster. He encouraged participation in it by such means as joining the SIGS, communicating news to the Cluster website, presenting findings, showcasing equipment at the forthcoming 2012 Gadget Show, and publishing results in the remote sensing Special Issue. You can see Dr Aplin's presentation here.

The Keynote Address was titled 'Rangeland monitoring using imagery from an unmanned aerial vehicles' and was delivered by Dr Andrea Laliberte, US Department of Agriculture and New Mexico State University. She described developing an operational uav-based remote sensing programme for ecological applications at the Jornada Experimental Range, New Mexico. You can see Dr Laliberte's presentation here.

Dr Pablo Zarco-Tejada, Director of Institute for Sustainable Agriculture (IAS), Spanish National Research Council gave a talk on 'Imaging spectrometry instrumentation for vegetation monitoring'. You can view Dr Zarco-Tejada's presentation here.

A talk on 'Micro-Hyperspec systems followed, given by Dr John Ferguson of Headwall Ltd and you can see Dr Ferguson's presentation here.

Prof. Daniel Donoghue and Dr Robert Content described the science behind 'A novel microslice hyperspectral imager' and  you can see Prof Donoghue's presentation here.

After lunch, informative practical demonstrations were given at Maiden Castle Sports Centre by SmartPlanes (Ole Hagner), Blue River Studios (Nigel King), Helipix (Steve Galvin) and sUAVe (Greg Colley). You can see photos of the UAV demonstrations here.

The RSPSoc Annual Lecture was delivered by Dr Pablo Zarco-Tajada, Director of Institute for Sustainable Agriculture (IAS), Spanish National Research Council and was titled 'High resolution hyperspectral and thermal remote sensing from UAV platforms for stress detection and vegetation monitoring'.

A convivial RSPSoc Dinner at St Mary's College followed, hosted by Dr Samantha Lavender, Chair of RSPSoc.